


The Small Hours

by network_connectivity_issues



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Just a lil angsty bonding, Post-Time Jump, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29343231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/network_connectivity_issues/pseuds/network_connectivity_issues
Summary: Just a little angsty bonding between Betty and Archie based on some of the snippets and speculation coming out of the Time Jump trailer.
Relationships: Archie Andrews & Betty Cooper, Archie Andrews/Betty Cooper
Comments: 7
Kudos: 65





	The Small Hours

She wakes with a strangled gasp, the lingering smell of mildew invading her nostrils and a phantom feeling of damp mud tacky on her fingers. Logically, she knows that it’s just sweat coating her palms, but in the small hours where the area between wakefulness and sleep is grey, she can’t keep the surfacing panic at bay. 

Pulling in shaky breaths, she shuts her eyes in a bid to rid herself of the last remnants of the nightmare that’s become a permanent fixture in her life. The grating voice of her FBI-appointed therapist echoes in her head, telling her to _ground herself_ as best she can and Betty thinks that the instinctive desire to roll her eyes is likely the best place to start.

Shoving her blanket to the floor in an effort to remove the encroaching feeling of claustrophobia, she swings her legs over the bed and ducks her head between her knees. Rubbing her thumb against her nails, she takes stock of the smooth finish of each. Ten nails, perfectly filed. Not one is shredded from clawing at the walls of an underground prison. Further evidence that time heals some wounds better than others.

She goes through the various “orienting drills” given to her by Dr. Starling but finds that, as has always been the case, none seem capable of quelling the slow constriction of her throat. She finds her feet moving towards her bathroom before she’s able to process the motion and in the next instant, she’s staring at her own haggard reflection in the mirror. 

Taking as calming a breath as she can muster, hands white-knuckling the edge of the sink like a lifeline, Betty begins counting in a bid to gain control, making it to 364 before her heartbeat has returned to its steady metronome and the panic has returned to its usual simmer. 

Looking up at bloodshot eyes and bags far deeper than what should be found on the face of a 25-year-old, she acknowledges that she’s seen better days.

Turning on the tap with a force most would deem unnecessary, she cups her hands beneath the cool stream of water before letting the liquid wash across her face. It’s a motion she repeats nearly a dozen times before she reaches for a towel that isn’t there. 

Betty lets out a frustrated sigh as she turns to pad out of her room towards the linen closet. Careful to avoid making a sound as she passes her mother’s door, she’s surprised to hear a low mumbling of voices drifting up from the first floor.

Following the low din, she tiptoes down the stairs – skillfully avoiding any that might creak – and cranes her neck to better hear the muffled voices filtering through the house. Instinctively, she reaches behind her back before remembering that her gun had carefully been stashed beneath her bed before she fell asleep.

Clenching her fingers into fists, she takes stock of her surroundings, noting anything and everything that she might be able to use in defense if needed. She’s been trained to face worse than a home intruder but still feels a building tension coursing its way through her body.

Turning the corner, she spots an all-too familiar silhouette – red hair backlit by a midnight episode of _I Love Lucy –_ and feels her body relax in an instant. The sight leaves her with an almost aching comfort, an exhale of relief escaping her lips as she pads into the living room to join the Cooper residence’s current houseguest.

“Arch?”

He jolts slightly at the sound of her voice, the tensing of his shoulders so minute that anyone other than her likely wouldn’t notice. Twisting his torso to watch her slow approach towards the couch, Archie looks at her in pensive confusion.

“Betty? What are you doing up?”

She gives him a sardonic look that screams: _I could ask you the same thing._

He grins in acknowledgment before scooting over on the couch and gesturing towards the vacant space in silent invitation. She only hesitates a moment before sitting next to him, giving him a soft smile when he immediately shuffles the blanket resting on his lap to cover her own as if on instinct.

They sit in comfortable silence for a moment, eyes glued to the black and white hijinks of Lucille Ball, before Betty nudges him with an arched brow.

“Well? What are _you_ doing up?”

Archie gives a small shrug, his careful evasion of her gaze speaking volumes. “Just couldn’t sleep.” 

Humming in understanding (or commiseration, she’s not entirely sure which) Betty suddenly has the inexplicable urge to keep the conversation going. To not let the two of them once again be submerged in a silence that takes years to break through. “Must be weird not being in your own room, your own _house_ even.”

“No. I mean, yeah, of course it is. But it’s not that.” Archie’s eyes flicker to hers for a moment and she meets his gaze in encouragement. 

“I get nightmares sometimes, you know? And when I do, it’s hard to just roll over and go back to sleep. I usually just try to tire myself out until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore.” 

He motions towards the TV and Betty suddenly wonders how many nights she and Archie have both found themselves alone in the dark hoping for exhaustion to overtake them. Likely more than either of them would care to admit.

“Nightmares from…?” 

She gestures in question to the dog-tags hanging loosely around his neck. They’ve been dangling in front of her for days now but she’s artfully avoided the subject, just as he’s pointedly not asked about her methodical nightly routine of re-locking every entrypoint and checking each small nook and crevice in the house. They haven’t talked about it yet, all of the things that happened in their years apart, but she knows it’s only a matter of time before everything comes tumbling out.

Shaking his head, Archie tucks the small pieces of steel beneath his shirt. “Not this time. It was actually… It’s one I used to have a lot in high school.”

This piques her interest and she turns to face him fully, mentally running down the list of traumas from their formative years in an attempt to figure out which has resurfaced. Unsurprisingly, there are too many for her to even think about making a guess. 

Looking at him for a moment, she reflects back on a time where they used to tell each other everything without the need for prodding or questioning. At one point, sharing secrets and fears came as naturally as breathing for them. The chasm that’s grown in the years they’ve been apart, the distance that started forming even _before_ their physical separation if Betty’s being honest with herself, has never felt quite as large as it does now when she’s forced to ask, “What about?”

He’s silent long enough that she wonders if he even heard her question before...

“The Black Hood.”

Her body bristles at the mention, every muscle tightening in a fight or flight response, and she knows her reaction hasn’t gone unnoticed. Archie’s staring at her in quiet contemplation as if gauging whether or not she’s about to make a break for it. She desperately wants to. To escape from the very room where her father confirmed her deepest fear and his darkest inclinations. It’s been nearly a decade since the killer of Elm Street terrorized Riverdale, but she’s not surprised that his sick actions have had a lasting impact on more than just herself.

“The day at Pop’s?”

Archie shakes his head slowly, eyes returning to the television as he softly replies, “The night in Pickens Park. Remember?”

She feels the breath whoosh from her lungs, pummeled out of her with the force of the memory of hot tears running down her face as she shoveled dirt over the cheap plywood that separated her from Archie.

“I remember.”

_How could she forget?_

“In the dream, I’m always there alone, digging through the dirt while the Black Hood stands over me. I dig and I dig and I dig trying to get to Svenson, to _save_ him. But when I finally open the coffin... you’re there instead. You’re inside _every_ time. And I’m always too late. I can never save you.”

He lets out a breath, shaking his head as if the motion will clear him of the visual, and Betty once again feels all air leave her body. She turns her head from the TV to the man sitting next to her, studying his profile in the warped light of the dark room. He looks exhausted and Betty fists the blanket in her lap to stop herself from reaching out to graze her fingers across the deep bags beneath his eyes.

“I had that dream every night for _weeks_ after it happened, you know. I’d wake up at like two in the morning and run to my window to make sure you were okay. Half the time your light was on and I could text you some pointless thing just to be sure…” 

He draws a steadying breath before heaving out a sigh and fiddling with a loose thread on the blanket.

“But sometimes the lights would be out and I couldn’t tell whether you were there or not. And I’d get so panicked that you weren’t... that you were actually out in some box in Pickens Park, alone, waiting for someone… for _me_ to come help. It took everything I had not to just run over and check for myself. I’d stare at your room for _hours_ until morning came and I saw that you were okay.”

She vaguely remembers a string of late-night texts, questions about homework assignments and memes about nothing at all, and feels her chest tighten at the realization of what Archie had been doing. He’s looking at her now, a lingering fear in his eyes, and she wonders how she never pieced it all together. 

He mistakes her look of horror for something else, what she can’t be sure, and barrels forward before she has a chance to speak.

“Trust me, I know how creepy that sounds. I just… I was _terrified,_ you know? My dad had already been shot and the thought of the Black Hood hurting someone else I loved was just too much to handle I guess.”

He gives a self-deprecating shrug, brushing off his innate goodness as though it’s a weakness to dismiss. It’s a move that is so _Archie,_ so inherently like him in every conceivable way, that Betty almost cries at the sight. 

_Someone I loved._

The words play on a loop in her head and she wonders if they still apply to her. With the way she still knows with complete certainty that she’d do anything for the man beside her (the fact that she’s back in Riverdale, sleeping in her childhood bed, is proof enough) she thinks they might.

They’re silent for a minute, both lost in their own tragic backstories, before Betty finds the courage to ask the question at the forefront of her mind.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

He lets out a low sigh, running his hand through his hair and suddenly looking every bit his age. No longer the boy-next-door, Betty acknowledges that somewhere and somehow Archie had grown up. Without her. The realization leaves an ache in her chest.

“I don’t know, Betty. Everything was so messed up. _We_ were so messed up. Nightmares didn’t seem like much of an issue in the grand scheme of things considering everything else that was going on. Plus I…”

He pauses as if catching himself from revealing something he thinks he shouldn’t. In another life it’s something that she would have let him get away with, but she’s done letting things go unsaid.

“You what?”

He stares at her for a beat, their silence punctuated by a 50’s laugh-track that isn’t able to drown out the steady hammering of her heart.

“I knew you’d find a way to blame yourself for it.”

Whatever she’d been expecting him to say, that hadn’t been it and Betty feels a familiar panic begin to worm its way through her in the form of the still lingering guilt of the whole ordeal.

“I wouldn’t...”

“You already _were,_ Betty. I know you were. The Jubilee speech, the calls from the Black Hood… you were already seeing yourself as the guilty party. Or at least the root of the problem. I knew if you found out about the nightmares, it’d just be another thing you’d shoulder the burden for and I… I just didn’t want to add to that, you know? None of it was your fault but I knew you wouldn't see it that way.”

She feels a familiar stinging in her eyes and forces her gaze towards the television before the tears can fall. Archie’s steady gaze is on her, she can feel it as clearly as she feels the residual guilt boiling to the surface, and she keeps her head firmly turned to avoid it. To avoid him seeing how true his words really are. She _had_ blamed herself, still does if she lets herself think about it long enough, and would have felt that much more crippled had she known about Archie’s own turmoil.

Still, the fact that she _didn’t_ know about it hits harder than anything. Looking back at how sequestered they all were, how much they kept to themselves, Betty can’t help but wonder what would have been different had they put everything in the open. How _helpful_ they could have been to each other had, just _once,_ they shared the weight of their traumas.

Unable to change the past, Betty instead opts to heed her own musings and let the armor fall in the present. Releasing her death-grip on the blanket, she reaches out and takes Archie’s hand in her own, squeezing slightly in acknowledgment, thanks, and apology. 

The familiar pressure of Archie’s palm against her own makes her hands feel, for the first time in ages, clean.

Minutes pass in companionable silence, Archie’s thumb stroking a steady rhythm against her hand before he stills and breaks the quiet.

“Betty?”

Turning to face him, she tilts her head in acknowledgment.

“I know a lot’s changed between us in the last few years but… I hope you know that hasn’t.”

Furrowing her brows, she’s about to question him when Archie cuts her off before she can ask.

“Me worrying about whether or not you’re okay... Wanting to make sure you are. That hasn’t changed.”

His words act as a soothing balm that she wasn’t aware she needed, a comforting warmth floods its way through her veins as she takes in the seriousness of his expression. Giving a watery smile, the most she can muster as a sudden wave of exhaustion overcomes her, Betty shifts along the couch and rests her head against his shoulder.

“You too, Arch.”

She feels him shift, pulling his hand from her own and wrapping his arm around her shoulder to get more comfortable as he tugs her closer against his chest.

“Are you? Okay I mean.”

Letting out a sigh as she thinks of her answer, Betty decides that she’s done hiding things from Archie Andrews. “Not really. But I’m trying to be.”

His fingers now follow a steady path through her hair, the sound of his thudding heart a soothing rhythm in her head.

“Day by day, Betty. You’ll get through it.”

The familiar words take her back to a booth at Pop’s - the place she once felt safest and most at home - and for the first time since that moment, she thinks she might actually believe them.

**Author's Note:**

> *quits this show*  
> *sees there might be some Barchie in S5*  
> *is suddenly back on the Riverdale bandwagon full-force*


End file.
